Let's Talk - some more - About Health Disparities

A race relations expert and consultant to the "Cosby Show" will deliver a free lecture on June 24 about the responsibility of minorities to solve some of their own health problems. Dr. Alvin Poussaint is also author of his latest book, Come on People: On the Path from Victims to Victors

Also, June 24th, Dr. Poussaint and Dr. Jill Ginsberg, co-founder and medical director of North by Northeast Medical Clinic will be the guests on OPB's newest radio program, Think Out Loud. Describing itself as "an energetic hour of live, unscripted conversation", Think Out Loud airs from 9 - 10 AM every morning on OPB (91.5). This will be a unique opportunity to consider how the nationwide issue of health disparities is manifested locally in Multnomah County and particularly in North and inner NE Portland.

A press release from Kaiser Permanente offers this appeal to get people to come to the Saward Lecture on Health Disparities:

In Multnomah County, African-Americans are twice as likely as whites to die from diabetes and two to six times more likely to be diagnosed with a sexually transmitted disease. Hispanic teens are six times more likely than white teens to give birth.

Yet, Poussaint believes African-Americans can help close the disparity gap by taking more responsibility for their own health, a view that led some people to criticize Poussaint and co-author Bill Cosby.

"Dr. Poussaint has a gift for seeing hope and possibility in the most challenging of circumstances," says Mary Durham, Ph.D., director of Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research, the event's sponsor. "That's why we invited him to deliver the lecture and officially kick off the search for a top-caliber scientist to fill our new endowed chair of health disparities."

The new position honors Dr. Mitch Greenlick, the founding director of Kaiser Permanente's Center for Health Research, who will also be honored at the Saward Lecture, named for Dr. Ernie Saward (1914-1989), the founding medical director of Kaiser Permanente Northwest, who retired in 1970.

Under Greenlick's leadership from 1964 to 1995, CHR became a nationally renowned research institution that played a key role in federal legislation to provide health care to disadvantaged populations, according to the press release.

"I'm absolutely thrilled and honored to have the endowed scientist position created and named for me," says Dr. Greenlick, who is currently serving his fourth term in the Oregon State Legislature. "This marks the intersection of three things that have been central to my professional life - the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research, health services research, and improving the health care of disadvantaged members of society."

Kaiser Permanente's Center for Health Research, founded in 1964, is a nonprofit research institution whose mission is advancing knowledge to improve health. It has research sites in Portland; Honolulu; and Atlanta.